Word: tens
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...wild. They and their wealthy customers do not understand -- or choose not to -- the high cost of this trade. They do not see the herds mowed down by automatic assault rifles, the tusks frantically hacked from the skulls and the orphaned and wounded elephants left to die. Ten years ago, 1.3 million elephants pressed the earth of Africa. Today there are perhaps...
...many of Africa's poachers operate with the cold precision of a crack military unit. They are well armed and organized into gangs of up to ten men. Their weapons, often AK-47 assault rifles, can pepper a herd with 30 rounds in less than five seconds. Frequently they are ex-army men. When they run into antipoaching units, they respond as trained soldiers would, withdrawing and firing, then scattering and rendezvousing hours or days later at prearranged sites. In Angola rebels help finance military operations with ivory. Among the larger bands of poachers, some men are designated as cooks...
Hong Kong has long been the crossroads of the ivory trade. Government figures show 675 tons of ivory stockpiled in scores of factories and about 300 shops. Ten families or syndicates account for three-quarters of the ivory Hong Kong imports each year. One of those is headed by Poon Tat Hing, whose ivory network has extended from Africa to Dubai and Singapore, and into Japan. His shop, Tat Hing Ivory, displays 6-ft.-tall ivory figures that sell for $15,000 and up. When asked where the ivory comes from, salesmen simply say "Africa." The Lai family...
Wang built up huge inventories of ivory in Singapore in anticipation of the CITES registration. On Oct. 31, 1986 -- the last day that importation of ivory without CITES papers was allowed -- more than ten tons of Wang's ivory arrived on a Boeing 707 from Burundi. When Chris Huxley, then a CITES official, examined some of the more than 50 tons of tusks Wang owned in Singapore, he found evidence that suggested some of the elephants had not died of natural causes: "A few had light-caliber bullet damage. Some still had considerable bone attached and had obviously been removed...
...investigative reporter who covered the Iran-contra and Pentagon procurement scandals, Gup logged 35,000 miles in ten weeks traveling around the globe. He began toward the end of the ivory trail, in Tokyo and Hong Kong, where more than 400 tons of ivory were imported last year. Visiting warehouses where tusks were stacked to the ceiling, "I got to see the ivory the way the Far East sees ivory -- divorced from the animal and remote from the killing," Gup says. "Most of the consumers are so far from the source that they cannot imagine its origin in axes...